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Over the past dozen years, the U.S. government's finances have become increasingly debt-ridden. About 30% of federal spending last year was borrowed. Total federal debt is growing at almost 10% per year.

Recent attempts to address the deficits that swell the debt were criticized as too painful, but in reality they were too small. The tax increases were tiny in comparison with annual deficits, and the spending cuts called sequestration applied only to part of the federal budget.

Most experts agree that the long-term problem lies in the part of the deficit that was not cut: the social-insurance programs. Social Security runs pension and disability insurance; Medicare and Medicaid are enormous medical-insurance plans for the aged and the poor. These huge programs are out of balance, with projected benefits far beyond intended payments. Demographic trends are making things much worse.

Hundreds of American businesses operate similar insurance plans without running huge losses. Why is government insurance so different? Government insurance is not for profit, but insolvency and bankrupting the country aren't the idea, either.

WE COULD LOOK FOR THE SOLUTION to this mystery not in life but in art -- specifically, the best movie ever made about the insurance business (and yes, there have been blessedly few such movies): the 1944 film-noir classic, Double Indemnity. The plot involves a young insurance salesman (played by Fred MacMurray) who agrees to hasten the end of one of his recently insured lives, at the request of the insured's very fetching wife and beneficiary (Barbara Stanwyck).

This is standard Hollywood fare. The more important part for us is the portrayal of the tension within an insurance company, played out between this young salesman and the company claims manager (Edward G. Robinson). The claims manager spots the young salesman's brains (if not his morals), considers those brains wasted in the sales game, and hopes to recruit him for the claims department.

What does this have to do with all of these insolvent government insurance programs? Let's listen to Robinson's claims manager explain to the salesman (with help from screenwriters Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler) what is so challenging about working in the claims department:

"It's the company. The way they do things. The way they don't do things. The way they'll write anything just to get it down on the sales sheet. And I'm the guy that has to sit here up to my neck in phony claims so they won't throw more money out of the window than they take in at the door…I get darn sick of picking up after a gang of fast-talking salesmen."

There's a constant battle within an insurance company among the actuaries who set the policy terms, the salesmen who hunt for acceptable clients, and the tough guys who investigate and settle the claims. The healthy tension between people with different skills and temperaments keeps the firm solvent.

Robinson's insurance company, like any company, must try to control its fast-talking salesmen. All salespeople know that the merchandise would move a little faster and their lives would be much easier if the home office would give them a little more flexibility -- lower prices, looser qualifications for customers, and a little more generosity in paying claims and refunds. The flexibility they seek, alas, invariably eats up the company's profit margins and threatens its long-run survival.

GOVERNMENT-RUN SOCIAL-INSURANCE PROGRAMS are dysfunctional because the sales force -- the elected officials -- have the flexibility that successful private companies would never give them. They get themselves elected with what Robinson, the claims manager, calls "a smooth line of monkey talk," promising voters low premiums and big benefits. There is no home office to stop them.

In the U.S., the Constitution grants taxing and spending powers to the Congress, but the Founding Fathers never dreamed that Congress would turn the federal government into an insurance company, with the representatives and senators acting as the sales force.

Our elected officials have written and sold policies that will "throw more money out of the window than they take in at the door," as the movie claims manager says.

The salesmen in Congress hear testimony concerning the solvency of Social Security and Medicare from nonelected, powerless trustees and actuaries, and they are told point-blank that these programs are fiscal disasters. They hear that average Medicare recipients will receive over $100,000 more in benefits than they ever paid for. But the lawmakers don't have to heed the warnings. They don't have to change the policy terms to promote solvency. Recently, they awarded cost-of-living adjustments to recipients when none were required and lowered the payroll-tax premiums to promote economic growth. Congress runs the actuarial department as well as the sales department.

When frustrated claimants complain, however, home-state legislators and their staffs swing into action to make sure their constituents get every benefit they're entitled to, and more. Legislation is passed to make sure certain claims are never denied again: for example, the 1960 change allowing people under 50 to claim disability and the 2005 change providing prescription-drug coverage. Congress runs the claims department, too.

In Double Indemnity, the death of the husband raises the claims manager's suspicions: The facts are improbable, as is the idea that it was a suicide. The young salesman is very anxious to learn what the police think, and the claims manager tells him the police figure that the husband "got tangled up in his crutches and fell off the train. They're satisfied," he says dismissively. "It's not their dough."

Politicians could defer to experts in writing and policing these government insurance plans, so that they do not bankrupt their country. Politicians, however, know that same important fact: It's not their dough.

DANIEL C. MUNSON is an individual investor and old-movie buff. He lives in St. Paul, Minn.